


Choices

by DragonflyxParodies



Series: Capricorn [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Gotham City Sirens (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Angst, Angsty too, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, But its okay the girls have this covered, F/F, It sad, Multi, Other, Past Relationship(s), Sad, Selina's musings on Bruce's motives for being a Dick, i wanna write more of them, its the mom squad my dudes, not a dick dick but a dick, u know what i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies
Summary: Selina Kyle was not the first woman in her family faced with the choice between partner and child. But she thinks she’s the first to choose right.





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> if you're new on the wtf is this train, this is part of an AU. Click the clicky and you can read all about it.  
> If you're not, you know the drill, bruce is still a dick, have some mom angst.

She doesn’t like spending the energy trying to rationalize away Bruce’s actions, his decisions. She doesn’t stop, though. None of them do, she thinks. He’d been a good man, once. A good _father_ , once. And as many terrible things he’d done now, there was one truth Selina would willingly admit – Jason’s death had _shattered_ him beyond repair.

She’d never seen him grieve like that, before or after. He was a quiet man, emotions caged in the subtle shift of his eyes and tilt of his mouth. But that little boy’s body had him screaming his grief to the sky, sobbing into her shoulder and holding on like he was afraid she’d slip away, too. When he hadn’t been catatonic, anyway. It had scared her. Comforting Ivy, grieving herself – that had been _infinitely_ easier, even with Harley’s specter looming over them.

He hadn’t pulled himself together, not really. Instead he’d obsessed over Jason’s memory. Better, she thought, at first, until he’d caged the boy’s uniform in glass and steel and honored him as a _soldier_ instead of a son. Until he’d burned that last case, the one they’d never finished, the one that had sent Jason fleeing across the world. Pretended it had never happened. That they’d never fought.

Guilt, she’d thought. That he’d frightened his boy so badly, made him think he didn’t want him so deeply, he’d sought the love of a stranger instead of his own father. Guilt, until the mere mention of his name became taboo, became a punishable offense. Dick had crept into her apartment more than one night, crying. He’d not been allowed to grieve, in all that. And then he hadn’t been allowed to remember, either.

And when a new little bird ended up on his doorstep, he’d been cold. Almost cruel, especially to hold him to the standards of a ghost he guarded the very mention of.

So – he’d never healed. Hadn’t ever let himself _start_. And when Jason came back, when her boy stood breathing and living and _begging_ for his father to fucking _act like one_ , Selina thinks that broke him even further.

The dissonance between wat he chose to remember Jason as, and who Jason had become. She thinks he doesn’t believe it’s really _Jason_ , even after all these years, all the tests she knows he’s performed in secret. And after – after Jason’s second death, she thinks he’ll never admit it. Couldn’t bear to admit he’d done that to his own son, to his boy. She doesn’t know if he could possibly break apart any farther than he already has, but acknowledging Jason as _real_ , she thinks, would do the job.

The night he finally approaches her, she is perched on the fire escape outside their apartment, watching through the window. Harley is asleep on Ivy’s lap, and Ivy is smiling down at her tablet screen. She’s video chatting with Jason. Selina thinks Tim is there, too – Jason’s ‘kidnapping’ is going surprisingly well.

Selina looks up when she senses him. He looks unsure, for a moment, and then draws his cape closer around himself. She lays her claws out on her lap.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Cat.” He says, his voice gravely and strained. She wonders if he has been crying. And as hard as it is, reminds herself that it doesn’t matter.

“I think it does.”

She’s not interested in a fight. She’s weary of it, of every confrontation with him being so _volatile_. It had been tiring before, when they had still been a _they_ , but now it was…too much.

When she’d chased him off Ivy and Harley’s trail, that had been…messy. She’d been more upset at the realization that _they_ were the missing parts of herself. Not him. And he’d given them to her. It had felt like a betrayal.

This was something different. This was _righteous_.

“Please, Cat.”

She picks up on the wild look in his eye a little too late, her name spoken like a brand on his tongue. But before he can come any closer, before she can even think to rise, a length of shining silver cuts through the night between them.

“One might think the Great Detective would examine his own behavior, instead of blaming those leaving him for his actions.”

Talia’s voice is dry and cold and careless, as if he truly means nothing more to her than the twisted railing of the fire escape beneath her feet.

She looks better than she had last time Selina had seen her. She looks _young_ now, unburdened, hair twisted back in a high ponytail and expression smooth. Her eyes are calm, if hard, and she inclines her head when Selina whispers her name.

He recoils like he’d been struck, rips his weakness out and away from himself like a physical thing, and bolts away. It takes only seconds.

They are quiet for a moment, and then Selina holds out a hand – claws left still and unbloodied on her lap. Talia’s fingers are frigid, and do not curl around her own easily.

“I might kill him.” She says. Her voice shakes. Selina understands.

Talia’s form is slender, fragile in Selina’s arms, her own body trembling.

“I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> here i emerge from my wallowing in venom trash to present you this now excuse me i have more monsterfucking to get back to okay thanks  
> i haven't seen the movie yet but gdmn yall are killing me with. all of it. yeah.


End file.
